May 4, 2012

Brewday: Hefeweizen

It happened like this: I had a packet of the WY3068 Weihenstephaner yeast that was pushing its use-by date and I just received my order from a bulk buy organised through the Aussie Home Brew forum. I had to brew and it had to be a hefeweizen. It was out of my hands.

My old German teacher would not approve, he's not a fan of Bavarians

Weihenstephaner's Hefeweizen was an early part of my craft beer education. In a beer scene that can get pretty silly with stuff like 'I bet I can melt your face with my IBUs' (which I love by the way), these beers just quietly do their thing and do it so well that they're still favourites of mine years later.

I now have ALL the grain

Getting a grain mill changed my life for the better

It's a really simple recipe, the magic comes from the yeast and the job of the brewer is to treat it right and get out of the way. It's 50/50 wheat and pils malt. Thanks to the bulk buy I now have some good German pilsner malt which should help. I used 8g of Tasmanian Hallertau, not very authentic but since it's gone in at 60 minutes and is only contributing 13-14 IBUs I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.

Water nearly ready, just put the bag in place

This was my first attempt at a stepped mash. The idea of a stepped mash is to allow the enzymes active at different temperatures to contribute their thing to the mash process. I'm hoping that it will provide better mouthfeel, a good head, good attenuation and maybe even better efficiency. And everything. Make my beer amazing, please, stepped mash.

First step

The plan was for rests at 55/67/72/78'C and it went ok but my first rest was a bit high and the second (the main rest) lost lots more heat over the hour than normal. It's a pretty cold day in Hobart though so I guess I'm just going to have to factor that in during winter. The other two were spot on. It took quite a bit longer than my normal mashes but I had back to back NBA games to watch so that wasn't a problem. Next time I'll be better prepared and I think it'll go really smoothly.

90 minute boil, hops in with 60 minutes remaining.

Mug-o-hops

At the back, living with the Stout and Brown Ale

Nice and easy. I'm planning on using some of the yeast slurry from this batch for a Dunkelweizen next week. Might as well make the most of it.